Frensham Village Churches

Letter from the Vicarage - July 2018

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

We have been doing a lot of soul searching work within the
church leadership lately, discussing how we can be a church that is more
welcoming, inclusive, accessible and hospitable for everybody – no matter what
age or ability, no matter what colour or creed, or even what faith or no faith! I
not only think but know from personal experience that it can be very hard just to
come in to a church, let alone sit in a congregation of strangers and then listen to
something that seems very alien in this day and age.
I took myself to church at the age of 11, having prayed to God for healing after
an accident that damaged my sight – the usual bribery that we all know – “Dear
God, if you can heal me I promise I’ll go to church…” We were not a church going
family and I can only think the place where I had learnt any thought of God was
from school assemblies, so this was all quite surprising to my family, as you can
imagine. When I arrived at church, no-one said hello, no-one helped me, no-one
explained anything and at one point I was even told to get out of someone’s
place in the pew! - All very demoralising, unhelpful and off-putting to a young,
scared but conscientious child who wanted to keep her promise to God…
Perhaps this background helps you all to understand where my passion for
welcome comes from.
But my passion is not just because of historical experience, it is also theological.
My personal and prayerful passions for welcome, inclusivity and improved
accessibility boils down to the fact that I believe we all are children of the same
creator God. God to me is ‘Life Itself’ and we are all born from and within God
through the mechanism (for want of a better word) of love and relationship. If
that which is ‘Life’ or ‘Existence’, (which we call God) did not exist then we would
not either… But as we do exist, God must exist and therefore can only be
inclusive, as to be exclusive would be to deny the Godself. This type of discussion
reminds me of the joke: ‘Descartes and two other philosophers were in the pub
one day, and at one point Descartes disagreed with the others on a particularly
topic, saying “I don’t think so!” and he promptly disappeared! Descartes was, as
probably you all know, the philosopher who famously said, “I think therefore I
am!” Therefore if he didn’t think so, he couldn’t exist…
Interestingly animals seem to know they are instinctively born of God and
therefore part of God whereas humans seem to have lost that intrinsic linkage or put ourselves above it or put barriers in the way – the ‘sin’ or separation to
which the story of Adam and Eve in Genesis points.
I believe my journey from that scared 11 year old to becoming a priest in the
Church of England has been (and still is) about helping the church to remove
barriers which, over centuries have been put in the way for a number of reasons
which may have been appropriate at the time or not. Some barriers may have
been necessary to maintain law and order, for example; some may simply be
‘barriers’ of language, symbols or ‘church stuff’ that are natural stages of
learning which with the correct mentorship and teaching can be overcome. But
other barriers may have been most unhelpful: ones based on insecurities, petty
power struggles, selfishness or corruption even (all sadly very un-Christian).
These may have actually hurt people or prevented them in the past from coming
into the grace of God when they most needed to – like when I did at the age of
11 years…
A church cannot be true to God with barriers, so we are definitely about
removing barriers and then helping and encouraging people to be less afraid of
walking together in God’s love. So I invite you all to come to the new additional
services which we have started (see centre pages of the magazine) or to come to
the Forum on Thursday evenings in the Church Hall or to exploring Christianity
on Wednesday evenings in The Vicarage. These are new or fresh expressions of
church for the service of our local community. Also, our new Benefice logo
(above) is all about revealing God’s love and our commitment to walking
together with all, onwards and upwards…!
Do go on www.frenshamchurches.org.uk to find out more about this and see it
in colour!